The development team at Tether.com, have confirmed that their wildly popular iTether iPhone app that existed in the iTunes App Store for less than a day was yanked down by Apple at approximately 12PM EST on Tuesday. The app was designed to share iPhone's data plan with your laptop to gain internet connectivity anywhere there's cellular coverage without having to pay the unreasonable tethering fees imposed by carriers.
"Around 12PM EST, Apple called our head office to let us know they were going to go ahead and pull our app iTether from the App Store. They stated it was because the app itself burdens the carrier network, however they offered us no way to remedy the solution… We were very clear when listing the app what the primary function was and they even followed up with several questions and requested a video demo then they approved the application." wrote the iTether team in an official statement.
"We strongly disagree that it burdens a carrier’s network, as from our own data history on more than 500,000 users we know the average user consumes less than 200 MBs of data per month on Tether. In comparison, one TV show streamed from Netflix, an approved Apple App, could easily be in the 300-400 MBs range. Sure, there are some users that will consume way more than the average however that’s the case with any of these types of products."
It was speculated early on by many tech blogs that the app would more than likely be pulled down by Apple even though the company approved the app for launch. The iTether team insist that users who already plunked down $14.99 for the app before it was pulled will be able to use the product as promised.
"According to Apple, users who purchase iTether before it was pulled will continue to be able to use the product." iTether said in their statement.
Although Apple has indicated the product would still perform for early adopters who bought in before the bitter end, I'm cautiously optimistic the company will actually stand behind their promise. Let's give it a few weeks and we all shall see.
"Our team is evaluating all of our options… Stay tuned."
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